All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From Voltes V

1. There is no problem that cannot be solved by the judicious application of Chain Knuckles, Voltes Bazooka, Ultraelectromagnetic Top, Volt Boomerang, and a Laser Sword.
   
2. You may be leader of a team of hyper-fit space fighters and the best fighter pilot in the galaxy but you will never get the girl because you don't ride a motorcycle or brandish a whip.
   
3. The enemy is always supremely ugly, except for their leader - but that's only because he's actually your half brother!
   
4. The enemy leader's female assistant is in love with him but he's too caught up with dreams of conquest and revenge to realise no one else actually likes him, and this may be his only chance at getting some.
   
5. Aerial battles and explosions are always better with a funky track containing appropriate horn blasts.
   
6. Little brothers may be annoying pipsqueaks but you never know when their robot pet octopus might save your collective skins using its tiny laser torch.
   
7. Victory is always sweeter if you twist your sword once you have it in the enemy's sternum and then and pull it back upwards to slice them in half with a "V" flashing from their torso just before they explode into a million pieces.
   
8. Anytime you have a heart-rending, emotional moment with your father, a giant beast robot's hand will punch in the wall and (again!) take him prisoner.
   

TODO - Programming ideas

- (for work) a web crawler to go through a URL, go thru all internal links, and validate that pages are all valid xhtml - to use on mobile site

- (for work) util to decrypt payloads, given a payload, and keys, -- able to select encryption method (twofish, blowfish, etc) and mode (ie,ECP) and padding...

- program to go through photos in a directory and verify that all photos are non-corrupt (ie, can be opened as images and all headers are valid)

- need to work on this... obviously, photos that can be opened but have their image data corrupted.. there's no way to know that other than viewing the damn thing... maybe get it to make a list of the suspect images.. perhaps just a html page with <IMG tags pointing to suspect images

- script to go to 2 different URLs and compare their contents... allowing for differences in whitespace

- Podcast manager - to allow you to 'podcast-ify' an arbitrary mp3.. such as mp3s downloaded from podcast archives that aren't in the feed anymore. is there a way to interface with itunes so it gets listed in the Podcast list in itunes?

-- as changing metadata in a photo will result in changes to MD5 of the file, how can we verify that the *photo* information is still the same but only the EXIF/metadata info has changed? (problem: the metadata is different in photos. some have none. some only EXIF. some IPTC and/or XMP - supported by Photoshop.) wouldnt we need to 1. make a copy of the file with all metadata left blank.. 2. calculate hashes based on this... store this info... and compare it when verifying an image...

3d tetris

Installed the new Opera 9 last night and discovered the 3d tetris
widget. Goodbye productivity! =)

Good to check out these other standalone versions of Tetris.

http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood/teaching/csc471/finalproj24/gzipkin/

http://www.sfu.ca/~vwchu/3dtetris.html

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/3d-tetris-pc.html

http://www.terminalstudio.com/tetrisarena.shtml

using jetty in maven and webwork

Check these out:

http://blogs.codehaus.org/people/brett/archives/001306_developing_with_j
etty_where_have_you_been_all_my_life.html

and this:

http://jetty.mortbay.org/jetty6/maven-plugin/howto.html

Web Work Quickstart also look useful - uses embedded Jetty.

http://www.opensymphony.com/webwork/wikidocs/QuickStart.html

Ebay of the week - Kraftwerk's vocoder

Courtesy of the almost perfect musicthing:

Kraftwerk's vocoder, used on Autobahn.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=+300001522431

Lordy, transistor overload!

Oh yes, I've started to sip that Kool-Aid...

After years of wishy-washy longing to get some of that Mac OSX lovin', I've finally taken the plunge and purchased a Mac - a nice, shiny 17" Powerbook 1.67Ghz PowerPC G4 (M6989LL/A) with 512Mb RAM, 100Gb hard drive, Superdrive. Just when Apple has almost completely moved over to Intel for their CPUs, I somehow decide to get the End-of-line model. How so?

It all started with the Macbook. After looking at the specs, and the few reviews out there that I've come across, I'd decided that the Macbook offered better value then the Macbook Pro. To me the main difference was that the Pro had 1) a separate video card, 2) a spiffy looking case, 3) slightly faster CPU, and 4) ambient light sensor + illuminated keyboard. The great price difference by just getting the Macbook made it even more compelling. I planned to get one upgraded to 1Gb RAM and 100Gb drive.

But then the Macbook stains story came out, and Apple were at first unresponsive, denying that there was even a problem. Then I heard issues about excessive heat, cases warping, magnetic adaptors melting - it all became too much. The fact that things like this have happened before with ver.1.0 hardware or software, reminded me about my policy of avoiding products in their first revision. Get other people to sort out the bugs first! =)

So I started thinking maybe I should just get an iBook, as they would be trying to clear end of line stock. Domayne were selling the 1.33Ghz 12" iBook for $1099. I went to Myer, George St last Thursday to look for similar bargains. I saw a 12" iBook, 1.2Ghz going for $699! Awesome price. I rang my longtime machead friend just to tell someone, and so he'd encourage me to buy it. (I am extremely indecisive when spending anything over $200!) Then I rang my wife, to tell her about the new laptop that I was "getting for her". While on the phone, I kept glancing at the iBook display and noticed one woman spending quite bit of time near them.

When I went to the display to ask about it, the salesguy told me that someone had just purchased the last one! The woman I saw two minutes earlier had bought it, and I got there just in time to see the salespeople changing the display prices, and bringing the box out of the stock room. I actually said, "Bullshit, you can't be serious!"

Now the next day, I rang around to see if other Myer branches had any others left. Not all Myer stores sell Apple computers. Actually, the only ones I know off are in the City and Bondi. I rang the latter and ended up speaking to the same guy who told me yesterday it was all sold out. I asked specifically about the 12" iBooks selling for $699 and he immediately remembered me from the day before. They were all gone, he said, and instead he recommended checking out the 17" Powerbooks selling for $1799, discounted from $3300.

I went with a friend to Myer and got the damn thing. I almost missed my chance again, as my friend wanted to go to lunch first, as I asked one of the staff (the guy in the black polo shirt who's the Apple-employed consultant) if there was still any stock of this model and he said yes. I asked another guy and he said the display unit was the last one. Whew! I also got a 3-yr extended warranty from Myer for $150, which is much cheaper than Applecare, which goesfor the same amount of time but costs more than $400. I'm surprised Apple allow this, but I guess the profits aren't really made in the warranties. I left it at the store since I was going out that night and just picked it up the next day, Saturday.

But now the peripheral/ accesory spending begins! I first bought $105 worth of books, on Sunday, and am now looking to get extra memory (2Gb -- approx $360), then a bag - $59, then maybe a pouch for the powerbook ($55), then maybe the apple mighty mouse ($75) and keyboard ($70). God!

So much for the bargain.. i might end up spending a thousand extra anyway! =)